This
small device offers great and innovative features: the big red button on
the box is very handy! Click on it and the current displayed image will be
stored on your hard disk as a BMP file:

You
can click as many times on this button to capture pictures from TV ( or
other video input sources ). A small image list is displayed on the PCTV
vision software toolbar miniatures of your saved pictures. If you double
click on it, the default image editor will be launched. Very useful. Note
that a print screen won’t capture the current displayed picture due to
the overlay process.

But
as Pinnacle wants to provide you the best video solution the PCTV vision
offers a videocorder features. So you can saved as files your favorites
films on your computer and watch them later. Obviously your hard disk has
to be a big one (you can set the video quality to optimise the file size).

Performance

As
the PCTV USB device used the USB bus you should have a fast computer to
don’t see the video slogging! But on a Pentium II based computer since
266Mhz it’s not a problem. But you’ll notice even on fast computers
(Pentium III ) the video slog when you launch a big software like Corel
Draw or Adobe PhotoShop… But sound & image qualities are really
good. The Nogatech USB Vision chip is a great & high performance
companion for this device.

Studio
Software

As
every studio hardware, Studio PCTV USB comes with the Pinnacle Studio
software (version in the box: 1.02 ). This great software is in
fact”movie maker” software. You can plug into your PCTV USB box
S-Video, Composite and audio cables to connect every kind of camcorder
from Hi8 to MiniDV one (you can also capture TV videos). The Studio
software will capture your video, and automatically detects scenes.
It’ll allow you to change sounds or to add music to your favorites
videos. You can choose transitions between each video scene and you can
even add great titles by using the pinnacle award winning software:
TitleDeko (but we regret that this software is not translated). The time
code toolbar will make your job easy to better manage the scenes. A graph
shows you the hard disk used space when you capture videos. You can set
the brightness, contrast… before capturing videos. Obviously this
wonderful green box captures audio!! It’s really a good, easy-to-use
software. It’ll transform your bothering videos in funny one that
you’ll be proud to show to family or friends.

The
final video can be saved in different file formats: AVI, MPEG or even
REALVideo to send your videos over the Internet with streaming technology.
The preview quality when editing the film is fair but when you compile the
film the video quality becomes amazing!!! The software can be
automatically updated via Internet. Sometimes you’re wondering why you
continue to use Premiere when the Studio software is so simple and user
friendly…

I/O

The
PCTV has got numerous I/O ports such as:Input:
S-Video, Composite, Audio (the problem is that this entry is a jack one
and not an RCA…), TV, FM. Output: Composite, Audio jack.

Remote

If
you used a lot the PCTV USB device, a brand new remote is available and
supported by the 1.04 drivers. This remote will allow you to set the
volume, change channels and much more ! You can order it directly from
Pinnacle Systems.

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